The Case for Like Technologies and Data Sharing at US/Mexico Borders

Perceptics has long advocated for securing our border crossings as a preemptive approach to curtailing illegal immigration and human, arms and drug trafficking, all of which add to the mounting violence in US border states. Arizona is host to the busiest land border crossing points in North America. Equipping these check points on both sides of the border with highly accurate License Plate Reader systems allows U.S. and Mexican border crossing agents to run proper vehicle and driver identification checks against national databases. Additionally, License Plate Readers (LPRs) placed on highways and roadways further inland promote illegal immigration and drug interdiction enforcement efforts carried out by various state law enforcement agencies. These secondary check points provide both state and federal law enforcement with added investigation, interdiction and data sharing capabilities between agencies and governments.

Effective targeting and investigation requires very high system accuracy, such that data integrity is optimized. When vehicles are fully identified through license plate identification, including state or country of origin, database checks are more accurate and response is optimized. Currently License Plate Reader systems utilized by Mexico, do not provide this high capability. Due to lower accuracy technology being deployed at Mexico border outbound lanes, read rate accuracy are reported to be exponentially lower than the 95% accuracy rating returned by a Perceptics License Plate Reader. Lower accuracy License Plate Readers and incomplete data used at Mexico’s border crossings strongly hamper potential data sharing between U.S. and Mexico, a vision expressed by the Obama administration’s Beyond the Borders Initiative.

Perceptics Proposed Strategy
With the growing violence and illegal trafficking of people, drugs, cash and firearms along US Border States and Mexico, Perceptics advocates the Mexican government adopt high accuracy, full state-identification License Plate Readers to enable comparable data collection between the U.S. and Mexico and proper data exchange. This would put Mexico’s technology on par and “data interoperable” with technology deployed by U.S. CBP and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI). Perceptics also advocates the implementation of License Plate Readers with state identification capabilities along secondary and inland roads for law enforcement and interdiction efforts. Strengthening efforts along our borders and standardizing threat assessments between our countries builds a ring of protection for both countries. Secondary check points further inland empowers Border States law enforcement with data to identify suspect vehicles and subsequent illegal activities. These layered security measures implemented on both sides of the border will aid in stronger enforcement and data sharing measures